The sign on the wall below the box read ‘Mini Village Library’. My excitement screamed out of my heart. A public library every few metres for everyone to read for free! This unusual discovery on my travels is something I really crave.

To fill my curiosity, I reached out to my host about its story, and what happened after is what I call pure luck. The brain behind this initiative happened to be our neighbour. So, the next day, I sat with her for some heartfelt chat.

Ringzen Wangmo is the only woman in Ladakh to graduate from Harvard. Growing up, she says, she had to struggle sourcing books to finish her schooling. Gradually, she had to leave her village and family to complete her studies in Delhi.

Like her, many Ladkahi children are leaving their houses (in greater numbers now) to pursue education and career opportunities away in a foreign land. This has led to a decline in the youth population over the years. The problem just doesn’t stop here. Seeing the comfortable life outside, many of these locals refrain from returning to their homeland. Many villages now sit empty, losing their identity and legacy, culture and tradition as families start to leave the tough life behind in the cold desert of Ladakh.

For Ringzen, she chose her home over luxury and decided to return with a big change.

She started the Village Lab foundation that helps with a primary problem of a lack of books. With the help of an NGO called Pratham and the locals, who provided her with a designated space from their land to set up a mini library, it was an instant hit. The state government, since then, recognises Sumoor as the Book Village of Ladakh.

Initially, the idea was to help the kids in the village build a habit of reading, but over time, even the adults and the old from the village started sitting on the bench after their evening walks and started reading. These libraries were smartly placed near bus stands, schools and parks where the crowd usually gathers.

This boosted the confidence amongst the locals, and she started getting more help. Books are now sourced through donations, publishers, and educational organisations, with many titles focusing on Buddhist philosophy, Ladakh’s history, environmental awareness, Hindi literature, and different languages.

Today, the total count of these mini libraries is more than 20. Ringzen, who is also a TEDx speaker, has bigger dreams for her village that extend beyond growing libraries. She is currently working on several ideas for bringing the students back to Ladakh and creating a regional curriculum for the schools. She has been regularly visiting nearby villages and conducting workshops around critical thinking and entrepreneurship, farming and indigenous knowledge.

Sadly, the state boards are still lacking the Ladakhi culture-specific curriculum like regional folk songs, dancing, astronomy, astrophysics, food, mathematics through measurement and planning, science through soil, water, and plant life, culture through traditional farming practices, and most importantly, relationships with each other, with elders, and with nature.

When Wangmo saw her land was slowly hollowed out, she decided to use her education to restore the future of many kids. Modernisation doesn’t have to be built at the cost of memory. Sometimes, it needs to blend with history and turn into a learning experience for the future.

As our host brought us a plate full of khambirs – Ladakhis’ favourite breakfast (fermented puffed barley roti) – and butter tea, the conversation slowly moved to the ongoing turbulence in the country around education, paper leaks and Sonam Wangchuk’s ongoing hunger strike in support of the students. Ringzen, who was also a board member of SECMOL for 3 years, said the right education is the only way to build a prosperous country. The protest is one way to change the future, and that is still a long shot, but another way that is still fully controlled and assured is to make sure we give access and the best education to young kids.

Our breakfast ended with lots of personal stories, shared interests and laughter, followed by taking pictures near the libraries.

That evening, while strolling through the village, I reached the River Nubra. I saw two siblings walking in the dunes. The younger one was following the footsteps of the elder sibling. They were surrounded by the colours of the blue sky filling every corner, and the sunlight was slowly drowning behind them, hiding in the mountains, casting warmth and brightness on them. The river melted into grey and was gently moving south-east to merge with the Skyok River near Diskit village. The sand beneath their feet glittered in silver, sending its warmth to their soles.

The place's silence piqued my curiosity about how I perceive progress. Out of a hundred things Ringzen could have done with her education, she chose to come back and uplift her people and the community. Money didn’t scare her, but she feared losing her roots, and the best way, she thought, to prevent this was by instilling a habit of reading, which clearly snowballed.

Just like the two siblings – the younger holding the hand and the elder showing the way.

The Village Lab Foundation is always in need of volunteers, so here’s the link if you’d like to volunteer: https://www.villagelabfoundation.org/

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A couple of days ago, in a Thai cooking class in Chiang Rai, my fellow members casually mentioned a place I had not heard of before. They spoke, “It’s Thailand, and I should risk it.” The thought relayed back to me when I looked for the place on the internet later and found NOTHING.

No “Best places to visit”, no “10 things to do”, no listicles about the best cafes to visit and certainly no one preaching about “How to do this trip on a budget”. It was like a lifetime opportunity to me. An untouched, unmapped canvas open for me to paint.

So after a few pages of scribbles in a small diary sorting out maps, buses, safety precautions, hostels, and other know-how, and two bus changes later, I arrived in the Nan Province of Thailand, located on the northeastern side of the country.

You know, sometimes we imagine a place where we drift away, dreaming in broad daylight – a dreamland? Nan seemed to be just that place.

And no, I am not here to give you another list of things to do or tell you about how beautiful this side of the country is, but I want to give you a sneak peek at why places like Nan can rarely become a part of your travel bucket list.

You may know Thailand from its raging Bangkok trip, buzzy Phuket lanes and untouched islands. But this side of the world is woven in rawness, slowness, and quietude, with a gentle touch of softness. Not something you say about being an aesthetic place, no.

I am talking about a land with no texture, contrast, or colours, yet surrounded by feelings, smells, and Thailand’s unspoken story of perseverance.

The place echoed in whispers its countless untold stories, history, culture, and identities. And hidden in this deep-rooted history were restraint, shyness and awkwardness.

Nan Province is built on the Mekong River basin, sharing a border with Laos. Most of its local community belongs to the Tai Lue Tribe, which lived in isolation for many years, ruled by many kings. The Tai Lue migrated from areas of southern China and Laos to Thailand over centuries.

Even today, the locals practice cultures that were brought centuries ago. They don’t speak English or rarely speak the standard Thai language spoken by the rest of the country. They speak Isan, a Tai-Kadai language family only spoken around the Thai-Laos border.

This cuts down tourism significantly.

For many years, Nan (a self-sufficient province) was cut off from the rest of the country due to the lack of transport. It was only a few years ago that it was given a dedicated bus transport service, connecting to places in another province.

For a traveller, unless a serious one, it takes effort to reach here. Interestingly, this gave Nan a godly character. Unreachable and inaccessible. Historically speaking, easily available places have ruined their reputation.

Despite my constant effort to nudge the locals, shopkeepers, and onlookers, I failed to make any conversation. For a moment, all my courage was going down the drain. I started aching for connections and conversation but got none.

Then, the day before I wanted to leave, call it a fluke of luck, I happened to enter a local temple called Wat Phumin, and that changed everything. Admittedly, I had grown bored visiting temples in the country.

The walls of the temple were full of folklore and murals depicting the ancient history of Nan. What was surprising was that there were also some obscene paintings of men and women inside the temple. Among them was this particular painting of a couple whispering something to each other. That mural, I would later learn, was one of Thailand’s most fascinating artworks called “Whispers of Love”.

It depicts a moustached man leaning in to whisper into a woman’s ear. The image captures an intimate, private moment between a couple that inspired numerous interpretations – a secret exchange between lovers, a symbol of soulmate-like companionship and a representation of trust and intimacy.

One of the interpretations put into practice by the locals even today is that when a new relationship is about to start, the man offers a cigarette to the woman, indicating that he desires to love her. If the woman lights the cigarette in return, then it means she accepts him as his lover.

How fascinating!

The mural is believed to have been painted by the local Tai Lue artist Nan Bua Phan during a restoration of the temple in the late 19th century. Other than “Whispers of Love”, the painting also depicts stories of the daily lives of the local people – gossiping and chatting; Burmese merchants and traders; families gathered together; musicians and performers; children at play; men smoking long pipes; and people wearing traditional Tai Lue clothing.

The walls in Wat Phumin spoke volumes about life in Nan, while I kept waiting and searching for them outside. It was almost like reading a visual travel journal from the nineteenth century.

It was almost like the place was playing hide and seek.

I also happened to discover, almost accidentally, that Nan had a motorable road till the border of Laos. This further filled my curiosity and activated my inner adventurous monster. It took me only half an hour to rent a mountain-friendly motorbike and fly into my playground. To this date, I have difficulty putting words to what I felt that day.

I felt the sunlight, the high tides, the sharp winds and the dreams. I felt free.

This is where I should confess something.

At the heart of every trip I do, there is always an idea of bringing stories from that place. Until my last day in Nan, I had none. I was sad, ashamed and in vain. I almost thought that all my efforts to really know this place were going to waste. But it brought me back to a long-forgotten travel life.

Nan gave me a sense of what it used to look like when people really, really travelled back in time. Taking risks in unknown lands, stumbling upon chances and fears and sorting things based on judgements. Testing and trying. Failing and getting lost. Trusting strangers and old maps.

For the first time in my life, I travelled to a place with no landmarks, to a land with a foreign language I had hardly known about, and I ate some of the weirdest dishes. But it stirred my life up with excitement, tension, and fearlessness.

A week after my departure, I was in Bangkok at a friend’s place, engrossed in conversations about my travels, when my phone buzzed. A bumble notification. I had forgotten to turn off the location. I gave in and went on a dinner date with a Thai local. I had to tell him about Whispers of Love (or ask), the tradition followed in Nan. He was equally unaware as I was on the first day. The date developed into something better and grew intense. We stepped it up by enacting an epic love lore for my Bangkok core memory. He offered a cigarette, and I lit it, and the night drifted away in deep slumber.

Dear Readers, If you at all happen to go to Nan, please be mindful and respectful towards the place and people. Today, the times demand that we be responsible, be civilised, and care for the ecosystem in equal measures. See you soon :)

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The Chouk (where the four lanes meet) was packed with local cabs, private cars, and a surge of tourists from around the world. Christmas was just over, and people came in to enjoy their New Year’s Holiday. But the traffic police seemed incapable of handling the increasing crowd. Clouds made their way through the Honks, screams, and confusion and touched my face like an old friend. Men and women covered in woollen hats and mufflers got down from the cabs right in the middle of the traffic before their destination arrived to avoid the long wait.

“Ma’am, taxi chahiye?” asked a cab driver. His friend stopped him, saying, “Woh yahi rehti hain aur unke paas scooty hai”. I smiled as I made my way through the traffic.

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Every third or fourth day, I come to McLeodganj to refill my groceries. It was a ritual that I followed by force of heart. I loved McLeodganj. I loved it in every shape, form, colour, and mood.

“There is nothing extraordinary about this place”, said my neighbour, who accompanied me this time.

“Just that. I like it for being so ordinary.” I told him.

Many times when we travel, we make everything about the destination. We wrap it up in invisible boundaries, define it as a package and limit its limitlessness. We define it as the ultimate hero of the trip when it is not meant to be defined. But this place taught me to become fond of the side actors, too. My affair with McLeodganj has been so critical in life that it opened a whole new sense of motives despite being a regular place. It brought me back to regularity, basics and helped me unearth stories of normalcy.

How many times do we forget the importance of that nukkad wala chai ka thela, where we spend Rs 10 for chai instead of an expensive coffee shop, or a regular salon shop, or a stationery shop or our acquaintance with vegetable vendors when we travel? In nine months of staying here, my regular vegetable vendor spots me from half a mile away. He is ready with the list of vegetables’ prices I am about to ask for before I reach, and then also pours some town’s recent gossip.

Not to say, when I do enter one of the expensive cafes here, the cafe owners, by now, also know my favourite place to sit, the coffee I’ll order and then aim for my perfect spicy chicken sandwich.

This relationship grew so gradually that it would be a perfect love story if a movie were made.

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There are just too many stories happening on the street that I haven’t yet figured out my sense of direction to Bhagsu Waterfall and many affluent, well-known cafes in Dharamkot. Well, in my mind, I can do that anytime. Maybe on the last day when I decide to leave

The place has rescued me from isolation the way only ordinary places can, without making a fuss about it. I have wandered its lanes like a lost child. I have discovered several unknown corners, like you try to know your other relationships. Lives in this small town are in a weird juncture of jhol momo and siddu, himchali dham and thukpa, Tibetan flags on the Dhauladhar mountain range.

I was only successful in setting my foot that way because it challenged me to know its depth, it invited me to its unshared world. It made me feel myself and left room for me to know that life is still living. It made me and also unmade me.

A perspective that has still not been made on social media.

In just a few months of being in and around McLeodganj, I turned into a part of its landscape. I became part of the group that welcomes travellers rather than being welcomed. I inhabited into a world different from the one I lived in before.

McLeodganj now knows me. Like no other place. It silently cares for me. It hums for me when I arrive, sometimes it lets me witness the sunset from the weirdest angle, and sometimes, it sends me clouds to squeeze my cheeks like an old friend.

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It is only now that I see it – orange has always been there, threading itself through my life like a colour I never chose but could never escape.

I first noticed it when I held my youngest brother for the first time. His cheeks were round and flushed, the colour of a just-peeled orange in winter sunlight. I didn’t want to put him down.

One wall of our childhood home was painted orange. On lonely evenings, when the house was too quiet and too full at the same time, I would stand before it and imagine a blackboard. I’d pick up invisible chalk and teach invisible students, claiming a sense of authority in my life.

My father once brought me an orange-coloured suit from Lucknow, with small purple roses knitted along the border. I wore it like it was the most precious thing I owned. Because it was.

The report card was orange too.

He held it in his hand, reading the word ‘Failed’ next to History, and then he slapped me in front of the entire class. I remember going home and standing in front of the mirror for a long time – three fingers, pale cheeks, and the slow protruding orange silhouette spreading across my face like a bruise that couldn’t decide what colour it wanted to be.

The next morning was a Saturday. My mother took me to Hanuman’s temple without saying much. She didn’t need to. The god stood draped in orange, calm and ancient, and I stood before him with a stinging cheek and my mother’s hand in mine.

My first phone was orange. I don’t think that was a coincidence anymore.

Without realising it, I reached for orange lipstick over pink, tied an orange scarf before a purple one, chose orange roses when white and red were right there. Something in me kept returning to it – the need to make peace with something I didn’t yet have words for.

This morning, I rode for two and a half hours to reach Bir. In the crowd ahead, women moved in orange sarees. Monks passed in orange robes. An orange flag stirred slowly on a temple tomb. And then, a young girl, her hair plaited neatly, with an orange ribbon at the end of her braid.

I stopped.

Looking at her, I finally understood why orange flowers had always made me ache. Why had I spent my whole life reaching for a colour that had once been used against me? I was trying to take it back. To make it mine again.

As I write this, I am sitting inside a monastery older than anything I have known, its walls rich with Tibetan history, saturated in deep orange and gold. I am far from my old life. Far from that classroom, that mirror, that report card.

And I find myself wanting to tell my father something:

I probably know more history than that orange report card could ever say.

This short essay was written in a 4-day travel writing workshop conducted at Deer Park Institute by . We wrote from our senses, and this piece was the result of keen observation of the surroundings.

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I came out unharmed.

As someone who travels frequently and who is a self-imposed collector of encounters, I always wonder what story I’d take from a place. Especially when that place is “Spiti”, where several stories are written in every moment by thousands of people. Stories about survival, mysticism, extremism, weather crisis, connection, belief, adventures, traditions, and many more.

My original story was going to be volunteering in a cafe for a month in peace, under the blanket of open skies, amidst the mountains, interacting with the locals, meeting travellers and sipping coffee with strangers.

But “The Accident” became my real story.

The moment it happened, my view of the place suddenly altered. Fear and horror were housed at the base of my spine as a new kind of travel experience took shape in my being.

I dreaded the moment “going to see this place” was mentioned by my fellow team members. The cafe where I worked became my safe house. Travellers from faraway places came to the cafe to write, talk, drink sea buckthorn tea and just have the experience.

I met people who taught me how to journal properly, a couple who had been meeting after a long time, a journalist who interviewed me, and an Italian guy who wanted to buy me coffee. I felt like a celebrity when a couple of women who had come with their families wanted to take pictures with me.

Fifteen days in and I still couldn’t see anything of the Spiti Valley. How does one travel with fear?

The cafe I worked at was based in the bustling town of Kaze (pronounced Kaza) - the capital town where tourists usually stay. A quaint town known to be the most accessible for trades. Locals from remote villages like Komik, Hikkim, and Langza came here to shop for their businesses and households.

Through my cafe, I occasionally saw the lives of migrant workers, local houses broken down, turning into other cafes or resorts; patches of open gardens, and a side of a giant mountain that was half covered in snow.

I ached to see yaks, ponies, seabuckthorne trees, monasteries and hear stories from casteless societies.

During one of the days, I stepped out to have lunch. Since the entire Spiti ran expensive restaurants, I entered a local restaurant that served local Tibetan cuisine that cost almost nothing. It was a cold October afternoon, so I ordered Thukpa.

There was nothing fancy about the restaurant. The Dalai Lama’s paintings graced each wall of the room, complemented by decorative silk frills in an array of colours that framed the space beautifully. A few more symbols and signs adorned the space. The dragon painted curtains on the front door swayed in slow motion as a woman entered from the door - a toddler cradled behind her back.

Something about the dragons, symbols and the frills intrigued me.

I asked the cafe owner about the dragons that sat in one of the corners by the door. He said dragons, in Tibetan, are the protectors of the realms. The dragon is often an embodiment of elemental power - wind, thunder, storm, water. In places like Ladakh and Spiti, where the climate is harsh, where the elements are respected, dragons are seen as beings who govern rivers, lakes, rain, and weather phenomena. They are respected because they can bring drought or flood.

I was left speechless. This gave birth to my curiosity in Tibetan art, culture and tradition.

One of the common symbols you’ll find across Tibetan culture is the symbol of never-ending love aka Endless or Eternal Knot, which represents the cyclic samsaras (suffering) - life, death and rebirth. However, some monks gave a poetic touch to this thought: when a life is born, it really never dies. The spirit it carries is always bound in nature in various forms - trees, stones, star etc.

This thought sat so deeply within me that I got a tattoo of the same symbol a month later.

I also learned about the medicine system used in the valley called Aamchi. The only “Aamchi” I ever heard was when it was put as a prefix to Mumbai. I learnt here that there is a different healing system used in Buddhist Philosophy. Aamchi are actually the doctors who practice Sowa Rigpa. Instead of using a stethoscope, they use their fingers to discover the disease in the body. They prepare the medicines themselves. The bulk of the herbs is gathered locally from the high mountain slopes, and all these are for free. Compassion in its truest form.

Some more discoveries came my way when, one evening, it was closing time and a nun entered to have something warm. I decided to keep her company, and she gave a glimpse of her life as a Tibetan woman. Tibetan women are never forced to get married. They can be spinsters all their lives, bring a partner of their own choice, or choose to become a nun. Their law entitles them to stay with their father, brother or nephew. They are given equal rights as the males in the family. Marriage is not a big deal in Tibetan culture. The first son takes the family name forward, and the last son is given away to monasteries to become a monk.

I wondered if any of these discoveries would have been possible if it weren’t for my fear of hopping in the cab again. Although towards the end of my trip, I did finally muster up the courage to accompany my team members, who had become friends, to several places. I got to attend a Tibetan Wedding in the village Rangrik, we went up to the highest post office in Hikkim and went to see Chham Dance in Komik.

Sometimes life twists and turns your life for good. The amount of time I spent with the locals and monks in Spiti gave me a new perspective on travelling to me. Maybe the accident was not merely an accident.

They say there are mysterious angels and fairies present in the winds of the valleys, and if you focus, you might hear them. When I was going back on the same route, this time in a local bus, I knew exactly where the accident had happened. I prayed to those angels and fairies to keep everyone on the bus safe.

Later, when the bus stopped at Kunzum Mata Temple (a sacred Mountain goddess in the Lahaul-Spiti valley), I sat right in the middle of its campus, thanking her for watching over us. I swear to you, some fairy did speak back to me in that moment.

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I had a content calendar ready for another three months, all the gadgets in place, scripts drafted, and my voice ready to find a direction. I kept to it as per the plan for another three months. I was slowly ticking off the timelines and tasks and was steadily approaching my goals.

In those three months, I received thoughtful feedback from people. They admired and motivated me, told me the content is flowing smoothly, and said someday something will definitely go viral if I keep at it.

I was determined and had scheduled a review for my content after three months to assess the metrics and performance and redefine the goals, if needed. I was in it, soulfully.

Until that exercise made me realise something, it left me in shock.

When I looked back at myself talking into the camera, I could barely recognise the person on the screen. I wasn’t sounding myself. It felt as if something else had replaced me. My speech, tone, and attitude felt alien.

It was nearly harrowing to realise that I had fallen prey to trends. My content had no depth, no value, or real meaning. I was just parroting what others wanted. The content did not reflect my knowledge of the world, but it was trying hard to make an invisible impression on the audience.

I decided to stop making travel content altogether.

I grew up watching movies like The Motorcycle Diaries, Before Sunrise, and plenty of docuseries on National Geographic. I read books by prolific writers like Paul Theroux, Pico Iyer, Rudyard Kipling and many more.

Much of my encouragement to travel was shaped by their experiences. They formed my imagination of travel that slowly settled as life-changing experiences. They also taught me that not all experiences are the same. It changed them several times on their journey, even in a single day.

These famous people travelled with no intention of showing but rather of living and reflecting. Their voices spoke of internal and external conflict, painfully beautiful memories, innocent interactions and implementing their travel experiences back in their real life. Their travel experiences came directly from their soul, tracing through the maps.

They learned so much, merely by being raw. That’s why they had so much to share. Their untold stories that their audiences were always eager to hear.

But today, the idea of travel has shifted, limiting its scope to what has already been discovered. People no longer take the road less travelled; they don’t hitchhike. Everyone travels in the comfort of pre-booked transportation, fancy suites, and eating in decorated cafes.

They talk about “mountains are calling” – yes, sometimes they do, but that also calls for soul-biting, teeth-clenching cold, mountain sickness, popping pills and depending on bland foods. Influencers label the place as the safest place to travel, only to encounter news, a few months later, about a 23-year-old solo traveller getting raped at the very same place. They feel proud posting the best itineraries and budgets without realising that everyone’s life moves differently.

When I sat to review my content, I felt like I was disrespecting my role models by doing them a huge disservice – creating content that did not reflect who I am or my real encounters.

It’s also funny how people slowly interpreted my disappearance from social media as my lack of ability to create content. This did make me think of myself as a bad traveller.

In hindsight, I am glad I did this short stint of three months, which told me who and what I don’t want to be. It made me realise that my story is more worthy than any short attention-spanned reel, that it does not necessarily have to connect with all. Because I have real things to share. My stories aren’t limited to social media slang, but it is as wide as one can imagine the sky to be.

Wait, did it actually make me “a better traveller”?

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Things I touched, books I read, movies I saw, and other experiences I lived started fluttering around this world like an annoying sound of a bee. It started to sting.

I had three major breakups in life. I accumulated a lot of pain and suffering during my teen years, but I also learned growth and self-awareness from these relationships.

Breaking up was hard, but it was inevitable. The period following every breakup was intense and full of misery. But I had to take it all in alone. There were days when I thought my head was too heavy, as if it would drop on the floor. And then there were days I did not see a flicker of the sunlight.

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I waited for the time when it would all pass.

With time, I forgot I used to be in relationships with these beautiful guys. I had no choice but to keep all the good memories. In fact, the opposite is closer to the truth. I would unleash all hell if I kept living in the bad ones. So, truly, I had no choice. The places we travelled to; our times in the kitchen, in bed; all conversations about the universe of things – I kept with myself the order they brought to my life: I became a connoisseur of coffee and a voracious reader, and I sparked new interests towards life. I forgot that I had a dull life before.

I learned Forgetfulness before Forgiveness.

After this epic ruminative period, perhaps out of fear of the hurt, I gave up on the idea of relationships and marriage. I dreaded talking to guys, let alone the idea of being in love.

Admittedly, I became a stupid, passionless, lifeless human body. I was slowly quitting on things I built and became. I never hated these men for leaving me emotionally, for I have dealt with a lot worse from my father. But I hated them for leaving me in the middle of an awesome and exciting life. A life that I never thought I would live. Now, when I was living, it was taken away, again, just like my father did.

Ohh, these men.

For many years, I moved on with self-criticism. Occasionally, a conversation kept playing in my head, dwelling like an ugly shadow.

“I am not enough.”

“I don’t want to get loved.”

“I am such a pathetic person.”

“What kind of men did I date?”

“I hate men”

I became a victim of my own life. Everything became difficult - waking up, smiling, meeting friends, talking to my parents, travelling, connecting and every other beautiful thing that this universe carries in its basket. Disruption came unannounced in every task, and for a moment, I was losing it all.

Forgiveness meant nothing to me. Seriously. It was merely a word sitting in some dirty, dusty corner. Switching between nouns and verbs in random sentences. Sometimes, it stretched to a fine line of suffering. But it was never worth the importance it had. No one around me used it, in application or action. It just existed like most of the words in the Oxford Dictionary, waiting for its turn to be used in this egoist world.

Then, suddenly, it started speaking to me in silence.

It started happening when I couldn’t take my life forward. My Astrologer friend said, “It's a karmic disorder. ”

WHAT????

To sort out my inner fight and prolonged confusion, I turned to my mom, who, all her life, kept forgiving my dad. I realised that’s where my circuit of forgiveness would start. A common link between us. My Father. We both had our own episodes of events with my dad. For her, it was the crumbling of her marriage; for me, it was the loss of my childhood hero.

I never understood where her resilience and undefeated spirit came from. Despite all the horrific incidents, she chose to stay under the same roof as him.

It disturbed me to the point that my entire being was formed based on this one truth. Never leave the ones you love, no matter how badly they have treated you.

“Mom, you should divorce him”, I said once.

“That’s not how it works," she replied.

As a kid, I saw this as her failure. Not standing up for herself and giving too much in this relationship harmed her, evidently, yet the thought of leaving my father never crossed her mind.

I realised her idea of forgiveness was not something I was hoping for. Her forgiveness was linked to hope. An acute, thin line of uncertainty that the future may not hold the same. That one day, her kids would grow old and give her the life she deserved.

I hated her for this.

It was harming me more than it was doing good. When I started looking retrospectively, I realised it was Mom who was supposed to be forgiven first. This sudden awakening shuddered me deeply. Out of the many things that I wanted to inherit from her, this I don’t want to carry.

But it did become the source of the pain that I carried for years. It wasn’t my dad; with him, I had lost all hope. It was my mom whom I had to deal with. Slowly, it started to settle in. My love for life would accelerate if I forgave her.

I had to forgive her for forgiving my father.

All these years, a cure was always with me, hidden in the sublime of consciousness, holding onto me tightly, letting me break to remind me that no matter how deep a grave looks, a flower would always sprout on the surface.

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“Mee nantar yenar, ata paus khup aahe” (I’ll come later; it’s raining heavily now), she said suddenly and ran back to her house.

She would have figured out the fight between Maa and Papa last night. If it wasn’t raining, she would have come inside and consoled Maa, which her three children weren’t capable of doing. The fight between our parents made us uncomfortable talking about anything emotional. As if any word muttered in the matter would have torn the family into two separate sides, in cries and opinions. And we were at such a tender age that we had difficulty understanding the nuances of comforting others with words.

Mom and Tai shared a special bond. Both were nearly the same age, and both had three children. I have no particular memory of what chord struck between them, but their strings were attached.

As a kid, I knew they shared a lot. They shared food, recipes, sarees and conversations from childhood memories. As naive as my mom was earlier, she was taught a great deal of the Mumbaikar way of living by Tai. They shared afternoons talking about the haldi-kumkum ceremony, rituals, UP slang and cursing the in-laws. Most of these conversations took place in Marathi. That’s how fluent my mum became with the language.

My mom was quite a thing in her youth. She looked gentle and talked softly. Her gracious nature carried her to people, giving them immediate comfort. She was adaptable and possessed talents that people would only talk about. And when people really talked about her, her existence would hurt my father.

Tai’s friendship was the only thing that held on. She came into Mom’s life at the most chaotic time, like a ray of hope. She gave smiles to her pain. When even her own parents dusted her to the dirt, she took care of my mum on the nights when my father locked her out of the house.

Mom either used to spend most of her time in the kitchen cooking or in bed recovering. Her life was on the thin line between both. One would lose its grip if the other didn’t hold well.

Contrary to my mum, Tai had a loving husband. He adored her like a moon is adorned in the night sky. Sanju Kaka was quite a jolly man. He was strict with his sons but very gentle to his wife. “Mala nahi pange ghyacha aahe majhi baikoshi” (I don’t want to mess with my wife ever), he said whenever he was affectionate with his wife in front of Mom.

Mom looked at them with her beautiful yearning eyes, hoping for a life like theirs. But the men in both houses were different. One respected her woman; the other was a slave to his ego. Both represented the origin of their culture.

For many years, Tai made our lives easy with her infectious laugh, wit and warm meals. It was fun to see our lives passing at an intersection of Maharashtrian and UP cultures - two different colours of thread intertwined and woven together. Actually, three. My mom was raised in Kolkata. So our plates reflected a symphony of Jhaal muri, mixed with mustard oil and konkani masala.

One morning, we woke up to the sounds of mourning and wailing. Mom wasn’t in the house. Scared, we opened the door to find strangers surrounding our doorway. Sanju Kaka had passed away in a sudden heart attack. People were crying and howling, whereas Tai was seated meekly in a corner. She looked vividly pale, barely moving and showing no expression. Mom sat beside her, arms wrapped around her. I couldn’t understand how I felt in that moment. This was the first time I saw people grieving; when someone is in pain, you hug them.

We didn’t see Mom for the next few days and Tai for several months. For all that I know, Tai cut herself off from all kinds of love and affection. With Sanju Kaka passing, life had thrown her into darkness and a burden. Her three children’s future had fallen upon her. Growing up, her parents taught her to be a good wife, and now life demands her to be someone entirely different.

She rarely spoke to Mom, that is, if Mom got to see her at all. Tai was the only person my Mom showed her emotions to. Only she deserved it. Suddenly, her afternoons were empty and caged to her own thoughts, and she was barely talking.

Without Tai, Mom became agonised with time. She would throw her hands on us as a release from the pain my father bestowed upon her. She started abusing, getting angry and was left with no tolerance for her mischievous kids. Her gentle nature was gone. Slowly, she became someone else.

I have no memory of how their relationship went from here after this, but with Sanju Kaka, we also lost Tai and Maa’s friendship.

But it did leave some unknown, untraced feeling that kept lingering all my life.

On my last visit home, I found an old picture lying around by Mom’s bedside table. It was all of us pictured together on my 8th Birthday - Me, Mom, Tai, Sanju Kaka, my brothers and Tai’s three sons.

Sanju Kaka’s face sent a tinge of pain in my heart. His words came flashing back to me – "Love can never be blood-bound or relation-bound. It’s universal." A hint of a tear already glinted in my eyes.

“I look funny with that big bindi on my forehead, Maa”, I said. Mom smiled sadly.

I told her that we should go and see Tai soon.

She slowly took the picture from my hand and said, “We lost Tai last month to cancer.”

This story was submitted as a response to a prompt, “Something I’ll never forget is this", to in their memoir writing workshop by .

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Life inside my office was mostly corrupt and dull. People walked with a single-minded focus of making money, buying the next car and investing in new real-estate properties, and lacked values, kindness and empathy. There were times when they would just work nonstop, tirelessly and mercilessly, away from their families for days. And I succumbed to that life as well.

It paid well, but I could never see myself living that life. I wondered why I never had such ambitions.

I realised, albeit late, that to become the woman I wanted to be, I’d have to take a different direction. But before I headed somewhere, I had to pause. So, I decided to take a break from work for an indefinite time, and this turned out to be one of the wisest decisions I ever made.

A few years ago, I underwent surgery due to an ACL tear. The doctor mandated physiotherapy and yoga for me. I read worse things about post-surgery trauma in many patients online, and it worried me to the point that I went to my physiotherapist every single day. When the therapy was over, I started practising yoga intensely. It turned out to be the only activity during my break.

I also took several skill-building courses, started investing more in books and watched YouTube videos about women breaking stereotypes and building businesses. By this time, I had also started writing more, completely unknown about how my future looked.

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But every morning, when I opened the curtains from my window, the sunlight assured me of something good. That in the world, full of possibilities and hope, I would land somewhere. I admired myself for how positive I had become, contrary to who I was before. Insecurities and fear would never leave my company.

I was slowly getting deeper into my yoga practices. Suddenly, one day I realised it would be good if I took a professional stand in yoga. After a few months, I became a trained Yoga Teacher and a certified Pre and Post Natal specialist.

And this is where everything changed. Like crossing a threshold into an alternate life - one I hadn’t known was waiting for me.

The time when I was doing Pre and Post Natal certification, everything shifted. All my life, I had been completely naive and careless about my own body and health. The body, which is my real home. The body that takes me everywhere. The only body that would walk me to death. When I started paying attention, I found myself exposed to the realities of being a woman. Why I felt nervous, why I was anxious, what happened in my body when I took those contraceptive pills, and really, how stupid of me to learn about the science around pregnancy this late in my life.

I remember I was angry, sad, in awe and surprised all at the same time.

So when I started teaching yoga to my students, many women got in touch with me for several other reasons. Some came for depression, stress and anxiety, and others came for PCOD, PCOS, infertility and hormonal issues. It felt like every woman I interacted with carried some sort of illness. Some were physical, and some were mental and emotional. It didn’t take long to realise that just like me, many women really didn’t take their health seriously. Or even if they did, they couldn’t follow the discipline, sacrificing themselves for families, careers or proving themselves.

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This led to a confidence in me that it was time to fuel the idea of my interest and inclination towards women's health. Perhaps, I was doing this for myself. I was getting old, and I wanted to protect myself from all sorts of stories that these women brought to me.

So, here I am today. In an alternate life, I am a Yoga therapist who helps and heals women with their hormonal imbalances, ranging from irregular periods, thyroid dysfunction, PCOS/D, perimenopause, to chronic fatigue and anxiety at the intersection of yoga and science.

While it took a lot of effort to take this road – initially I was terrified of all the scientific and technical names of the concepts, but my guru assured me that I would do well and that I did.

Now, when I look back at the life I was once living some 12 years ago, staring out of the window at my desk, thinking about how I would really feel when I lived a life of my own and not a borrowed one. I have a TED Talk ready for her.

That humanity should strive to live a life of service and not to be supreme. No money can cherish the tender happiness when you see women going back to their home, to their original being, to their healed body.

For a woman, from a woman.

Lesson that I learnt: Next time, when you see the clouds appear grey, know that it’s time you changed the direction.

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I wouldn’t have thought of a moment like this ever in my life had I not lived it. As a young girl, I always dreamt of witnessing snowfall live and raw, and this dream came true a few years ago when I was in Kedarkantha. I thought that was it. I can’t feel it any other way. I presumed everyone felt the same. Showering under soft, cold cotton candy, feeling dreamy and heavenly uplifted in the moment, made it so surreal.

But nature whispered. Under the constellation of billions of stars, where the sky moves constantly, where unknown winds land in the tiniest corners, where you unearth new events, invent foods, and discover new species, the world drags itself forward, where everything changes – how, in cosmic events, would a human feel the same?

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As I woke up to the distant sound of yelling and shouting, unusual for where I stay, I pulled the curtains from the window, and I saw a few kids throwing snow at each other on one of the terraces. They were exhilarated, their teeth matching the fallen snow.

There’s something about how you feel seeing others in their truest, happiest and brightest form.

I stood there watching the kids living their innocent times - a slow-burning realisation of missed opportunity hitting me hard, thinking, ‘This is how I should have enjoyed my first snow.’

The urge scaled within me from top to bottom. I desperately wanted to be out and see how my fellow neighbours felt. But as soon as I opened the front door, a heap of ice blocked my way. For the next couple of hours, I scraped the ice from my doorway.

Then, I decided to walk.

My first stop was to my aunty’s kitchen (know her here). I saw her standing by the kitchen window, admiring the beauty that she couldn’t witness for four years. She stood there singing alone – a local Himachali song, which I could barely understand. She didn’t realise my arrival, and I didn’t nudge her either. After a few moments of witnessing her rendition of joy, I left silently.

As I walked through the exotic wonderlands of the village, a few middle-aged women smiled and giggled in their exuberance, putting tikka on each other. For a brief moment, I reckoned with their existence in awe. Another realisation flowed into me – a celebration of connection.

Until I reached my final destination, I couldn’t understand how grand an event is of the snow falling for these villagers. It’s the same cafe cum homestay where I spend most of the time writing, thinking and contemplating. But today, none of that mattered. A story was already unfolding in front of my eyes. Men and women from the village gathered here to have yet another form of celebration. In one corner, a young group of men opened the beers; in the kitchen, some men and women were engaged in adult conversation, deep-frying the puris simultaneously; some were clearing the ice from the lane; some were preparing to make the sweets; and some gathered around the fire in the centre.

That morning, before I woke up from the bed, I read a few lines by Marcus Aurelius – “The greatest blessings of mankind are within us and within our reach.” When I stood there in that room watching people in the embrace of each other’s presence, I understood what Marcus said. In that moment, I realised these are the people who have witnessed snow ever since their birth, yet their longing and delight could kill that of a first-timer.

I took some time to analyse my own feelings about that day.

I have been blessed to live in the environment of this joy every single day in many unrecognisable forms. Perhaps I forgot to be grateful. The day when I was under the spell of snow for the first time was special. But the day spent in the village, marvelling at it with the locals, was one of the most terrific experiences of my life.

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If you want to hear a Himachali folk song, here’s one of my favourites. I would recommend rereading the post, playing the music in the background. Let me know how you feel. :)

Dhudu Nacheya

In mid-Sept 2025, I came here to volunteer in a monastery, teaching English and communication to the monks. Fifteen days in, and the thought of leaving this quiet and peaceful life was giving me sleepless nights.

So just like that, on a whim, I decided to quit city life.

It was scary at first. A city-born girl, who had lived in warm weather all her life, ate out at fancy restaurants, bought expensive clothes, and hung out with her friends every weekend. For her, what would a country life serve?

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I realised that all my life, I lived a lie. I was given the wrong narration. I was taught that more is good, chaos is the solution, chasing is going in the right direction, and overstimulation means working hard. But this led to a painful, stuck and grieving life—a life that is not only not sustainable but also a slow death in every possible way.

I witnessed people leaving their villages and settling in the cities to earn more in lieu of a better life. My father himself flew from Benaras in the early 80s to Mumbai to live a life he saw in the movies. But when he arrived at his dream destination, his heart was broken, and his dreams were shattered. He ended up getting a job as a typist that fetched only 500 bucks.

I never had dreams as my father did. To the contrary, I was making a U-turn, correcting his mistakes. I was going to give it all up. I sold and donated everything I owned. Packed my life into three bags and just left.

I remember the time when I was on the plane; I questioned everything I did. I have always been a wild goose. I rebelled against my parents over education, work, dressing up, and leaving home. When this thought passed me, it sent a chill down my spine. Did I just do everything to live in a small village?

But these three months have been like an awakening.

I had seen the mountains before, but never lived with them. Waking up every day to a different shade, texture, and feeling of seeing a giant snow-clad mountain right outside brought me closer to my being. Going to the terrace, sitting in front of the Dhauladhar range and talking to them aloud is now my routine.

There is a green pasture right in front of my house that has changed colour every month. Sometimes because of the sky and sometimes because of the season. Currently, it’s turned yellow, and tiny mustard leaves are sprouting out.

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My host family is from the Gaddi Tribe, whose ancestors settled on this land some 100 years ago. The tribe are the sheep herders, whose origin is still not known to many people. Some say they travel from Punjab, and some say they come from Kashmir. Even today, some parts of this tribe are nomads. They don’t have homes. They keep travelling along with their sheep, tenting at different locations. In harsh winters, they travel down to the south from Bharout to Chamba and settle in places like Palampur and Una.

Every morning, the smoke erupts from the Kitchen’s chimney, evaporating in the thin air. The smell in the air reminds me of my time spent in Benaras with my great-grandmother. Her cuddles and pampering come back in the form of tears. Deep in my heart, I know that I terribly miss what I left behind in my childhood. The simplicity, the basics, small pleasurable moments. And just being here in this house takes me back there.

I share a very special relationship with the Aunty here (Host). Most of our conversations are in the kitchen that separates the house. She offers me tea, food and warmth whenever I go. She loves to talk. By now, I know most of her things - her health, childhood, her relationship with her kids, husband and in-laws. Once on a morning walk, which is also one of our routines together, she opened up about how mischievous she was as a child. She had a best friend who supported her in all her crimes. She remembered one incident when they were in the fields, and she played a prank on all of her friends. During this conversation, I saw a glint of tears in her eyes. She missed her. She missed home. But she never lets me miss my home.

One of my favourite things to do here is to walk. The village is the starting point for several treks; except for one or two, I have walked on all of these trails. The walks have given me more stories than anything else could ever give. A woman smiling under her veil, revealing her softness; villagers forming a community to help each other without expecting anything in return; sharing homemade delicacies with the strangers; inviting to marriages and other occasions; crafting and weaving the waste materials, spreading love and kindness and finding joy in the smallest things. Everyone’s living with less.

I found a small group of people who are now my friends. Most of my neighbours invite me for lunch or dinner, so there are days when I just don’t cook. Sometimes, I get fresh herbs, fruits and vegetables from their gardens.

Ever since I have come here, I have turned into an excessive observer rather than a doer, slowly realising that I don’t have to be in action all the time. A balance between doing and being. My mantra of slow travelling has turned to slow living. A life that doesn’t take your energy but rather fills it. It lets you breathe, simplify and declutter your mind. It lets you focus on the right thing. The Nature.

Nature lets you exist in your real form. It lets you feel enough. Nothing more, nothing less.

At this stage of my life, I feel another layer has peeled. A mindset shift that’s transforming me into a worshipful, soft, spiritual yet frivolous being.

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So, now this time, when I started yearning for them, I wanted to take a different perspective, not to conquer them.

As fate would have it, one fine evening, when it rained cats and dogs, while surfing the internet, I accidentally stumbled upon an article about a Zen Meditation Centre called Bodhi Zendo. Incidentally, it was when I had been contemplating deepening my practice. Practising meditation is like digging endlessly in the hope of finding gold in an unknown space. Once you have tasted the magic of silence, you want more.

As the bus pulled over in the middle of a narrow, snaky path of the town Perumalmalai, it felt like entering a place of heaven. The hills were covered in a sheet of grey clouds flowing too rapidly from east to west. The smell of wet soil and damp forest took over the place, and then a lanky-looking man approached me, hoping to help and that he did.

He dropped me off at the centre, which was 1.2 miles off the main road in a dense forest. The way to the centre had many colourful flowers - Sunflowers, marigolds, chamomile, different types of roses and some wild ones too. I made a point of walking back here once I was settled in my new abode.

The centre welcomed me with Silence. Thursdays are the day the Zendo practices silence. It was suddenly then I realised that it could be my favourite kind of welcome. Nothing else would have honoured my awkward social interaction than this. I was a happy child.

I was given a small but more than enough space for my stay here. It had a bed, a table and chair and a washroom. But I could hardly stay indoors. The centre was idyllic. As if no soul existed here, only to later know at the breakfast table that at least three dozen people stayed there. Everyone was silent, following the rules.

The next few days, I followed the rules too. But it hardly felt like I was doing that. My body, in its natural capacity, did it on its own. It was like my limbic brain found its perfect match. It just took its course, contrasting to what I feared before. I had never been to a multi-day meditation before, and being a first timer, I did pretty well. Having had to fight choosing between Vipassana and Zen meditation, I think the final decision of a shorter trip served me well.

The first two days of 5times meditation each day were just usual. But it was the third day when things started to change. The wires in my brain started to move as if something had exploded.

Slowly, it started to make sense why the mountains are the best place to meditate. It’s when you sit to meditate, the silence looms over intrinsically. It’s when you realise that the mountains talk back to you, not just through silence but also through solitude. Not to make sense or put a word to it, but to be in the state of it and observing it, accepting it. It’s a relationship that you never asked for, never expected, but now it’s the only thing you want to seek mysteriously. As they say, the Palani Hills of Perumalmalai are filled with mysteries, maybe it was the reason that the birds sing in a particular way that is only understood by you. And if that wasn’t enough. The answers come back in colours, clouds and rain. It’s a living proof that mere existence is magical. Your thoughts and your presence are just enough.

It is when you realise that you are awake, that you are aware, as one of the Koans (mantras) that we chanted every day goes - Emptiness is Form, Form is Emptiness.

Because mountains are not just structures, if you look, they communicate. If you look deeper, they’ll talk. If you look more deeply, they’ll become us.

I found myself in a most comfortable space I've ever been. I looked at the moving leaves, I observed flowers like never before, smiled at them, I spoke to the clouds, and I read books. That’s all my life was for the seven days I spent there. Without ambition, without race and expectations.

Besides visiting the Zendo, I also had a plan of going to Kodaikanal, the infamous touristy town of South India, but decided to ditch it over the fear of overstimulation. And that’s when I recollected a phrase from Nan Shepherd’s book, Living in the Mountains.

“I believe that now I understand in some small measure why the Buddhist goes on pilgrimage to a mountain. The journey is itself part of the technique by which the god is sought. It is a journey into being; for I penetrate more deeply into the mountain’s life, I penetrate also into my own. For an hour, I am beyond desire. It is not ecstasy that leaps out of the self that makes man like a god. I am not out of myself but in myself. I am. To know being, this is the final grace accorded from the mountains”

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We were in Srinagar, circling the infamous Lal Chowk market, when Jasveer, our guide, began telling us about the history of this place, bombings, curfews, and how it was once a prime target of terror attacks.

This was our first trip together. Just me and my mom.

Having done a few solo trips, I finally had the confidence to take her along on one. I’d dreamed of traveling with her someday. And here we were. THE DAY.

I had curated everything carefully—flights, hotels, itinerary. Every minute was perfectly planned.

Usually, I don’t travel like this. My travels are spontaneous and fluid. But after an unexpected attack in Pulwama just a few months back, safety was the only non-negotiable.

Mom was completely against this trip. But a little emotional persuasion... and she finally caved in.

In hindsight, maybe it wasn’t the best idea.

My mom grew up in an oppressively patriarchal society, so much so that she genuinely believed that if a man wasn’t around, we weren’t safe. I don't blame her. That’s what she'd seen her entire life.

For her, two grown women traveling alone in a man’s world felt reckless, unsafe.
That belief was put to the test when a group of men suddenly banged on our cab immediately upon our arrival in Gulmarg.

Mom froze in fear.
They were Jasveer’s friends, just messing around. They didn’t know he had tourists. But it was enough to shake her. And from that moment, I was left struggling to convince her that everything was okay.

She stayed tense for the rest of the trip.
She frowned at everything - non-veg food, bearded tall men, police holding guns, military trucks and intensive scrutiny at every checkpoint.

Jasveer noticed.

He wasn’t just our guide anymore. Something shifted. He saw my mom’s restlessness and gently stepped in with small acts of kindness.

He started spending more time with her. Asked about her past travels. Her favourite places. Her love for mountains. He brought her food she would enjoy. He shared stories of Kashmir, its magic, its pain.

And something softened.
By the fourth day, Mom was slowly getting back to her usual self. Beneath all her frowns, I realised, was also a quiet excitement. The thrill of being in Kashmir - this land of snow, stories, and silence.

Before we knew it, Mom and Jasveer had become good friends.
And our time in Kashmir began to feel warm, steady, and memorable.

Jasveer was born and raised in Kashmir. About my age. He had been guiding tourists for over 12 years.

One cold evening, when Mom was asleep and I wanted to sneak out for a smoke, Jasveer helped me. We sat by a fire and talked about his life, about Kashmir.

He told me how different survival was here.
How every day came with new challenges. How they must narrate different stories to different people because that’s what keeps them safe and fed.

In his eyes, glowing against the flames, I saw the unspoken layers of Kashmir. The ones you don’t see in news debates or tourist brochures.

He loved Sufi music and suddenly started humming a soft melody.
When he finished, he said something that changed me forever.

“I use a Hindu name for Hindu tourists,” he said quietly.
“So do most guides here.”

Not because they want to hide their identity. Not out of shame. But because they know how deeply tourists fear what they don’t understand. They do it to make people feel safe. To protect the land, the livelihood in the best efforts to bring them the real Kashmir.

“It breaks our hearts,” he said, “when people choose religion over culture.”

When another conflict broke out in Kashmir recently, I immediately thought of Jasveer.
And I realised, I never asked for his real name.

I called my mom that evening, wondering if the news had shaken her. After all, we had been to Pahalgam not too long ago.

But her response stunned me.

She said:
“I would still go to my friend in Kashmir.”

I want to highly recommend an anime series called “The Apothecary Diaries”. It’s based on a 17-year-old girl who is an expert in making and consuming poison. She is so smart that she at times has inspired me to go by my day.

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I spent a month in Kaza (also called Kaze), volunteering at a cafe tucked in the cold heart of Spiti Valley, Himachal Pradesh.

Spiti is where the world strips itself down to bare bones - dramatic landscapes, endless rubble, and mountains that seem to have emerged from the moon. The valley is called many things: The Middle Land (between India and Tibet), Ladakh’s quiet cousin, Land of Adventures. But no name does justice to what it feels like to stand there. It’s a place of contradictions - where barrenness is beautiful, where the harshest cold can be the most humbling.

For the first few days, I was simply an outsider in awe, waking up to mountains felt surreal. But the illusion soon faded. The cold began to settle into my bones, and the silence, once magical, started to feel isolating. For a girl raised in Mumbai’s chaos and warmth, each day was a quiet battle.

It was in this setting that I met Tashi Di - a local who cooked at the café. She had the kind of strength you don’t notice at first - steady, practical, unfazed by the cold or the cracks in the wall. We’d spend hours huddled near the fire in the kitchen, making sandwiches, sipping seabuckthorn tea, and talking about Spiti, about people she didn’t like, and, most often, about homes.

Tashi Di wasn’t originally from Kaza. Her family belonged to Demul, a lesser-known high-altitude village in Spiti. But like many others, she and her husband had moved to Kaza to find work and stability. Their traditional mud-and-stone home in Demul, she told me, was still her favourite place in the world. It was built to survive winters, unlike the cemented boxes now cropping up in Spiti.

One afternoon, when the café was quiet, I asked if I could visit her home here in Kaza. She agreed.

We walked through Kaza’s winding lanes - not the postcard parts, but its lived-in corners. Her apartment was on the first floor of a modest building, where voices echoed through the walls. It was a single room shared by five people - her husband, their three children, and her. Yet, it felt full, not cramped.

The kitchen was just a corner with a stove wedged between utensils. A small area stored clothes and books in careful stacks. An open washroom stood behind a curtain. There was only one window for light, but warmth radiated from a traditional fire system connected to a chimney - the kind that makes winter survivable.

On a plank near the wall, her son Tille played on a phone while little Karma lay under the sofa, slurping Maggi. The house smelled of earth and smoke. It wasn’t picture-perfect - it was real, and it was theirs.

Karma pulled me in by the hand, as if I’d always belonged. Pictures of monks, family portraits, and colourful frames lined the walls. As I looked around, Tashi Di handed me a bowl of soup and said softly, “We won’t stay here long. Maybe we’ll move again, somewhere the kids can study and grow.”

I sat in that room for an hour talking to Tashi Di and playing with Karma. When I walked back to the café, something stayed with me.

Spiti’s grandeur is obvious, but what I witnessed that day was its soul. The mountains may be massive, but the lives within them are quiet, tough, and tender in ways the landscape could never reveal.

Books - I finally finished Stoner, and let me tell you that it’s a keeper. Its just not a book. It’s a quiet account of Stoner’s life. There are many, many things to learn from the book. One of my favourite quotes is

“If the portrait has a flaw, it is in its remorselessness, yet such is the clarity of the understanding that we come to accept it simply as the way things are, in the same way as the love affair becomes the way things ought to have been.” Let me know how you find it.

I am currently readimg Gunahon ke Devta by Dharamvir Bharti.

I watched two Brilliant movies this week.

SINNERS - I would say it’s a musical film. The music songs are a central part of the storytelling and why not? When the composer is Ludwig Göransson.

Meiyazaghan - a heartwarming Indian Tamil movie. It’s about human relationships, and frankly, the storytelling has peaked here.

That’s all for today. See you next week :)

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Last week, sitting on a bench under the open sky, I realised my understanding of love has been a journey stitched together by longing, heartbreak, loneliness, and unexpected comforts.

Soaking in some morning sun, I saw a beautiful little girl holding her parents’ hands. The sight sent me down memory lane to my childhood. The aching was so bad to bear that I had a flashback to my version that once existed.

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Then, there were floods of thoughts about everything I missed, everything I am not and never wanted to be, as a kid. I was suddenly in a dark place in broad daylight. Tears welled up, and without realising, I was sobbing.

I had a troubled childhood, deprived of love. In the very early time of their marriage, my parents were loving to each other. Then times changed, and gradually, which felt sudden, we stopped sitting on the dinner table together. I found myself constantly running in different directions for the love of two, only to get none.

I remembered having a diary when I was a kid, where I wrote a lot about House of Chaos - the house where my parents and I still lived together. Going back home from school got unpleasant with each passing day, yet I went home in the hope of warmth and care. But it turned shallow. Pale, lifeless faces wanting me to conform all the time.

After a few years, I left the house and learnt that love is also distancing yourself.

Once, I loved a man, in the hope of a life my parents lived once, finally setting out to make it a love ideology, only to find that he loved two other women alongside me. My love was shattered and left in pieces again. That day, I learnt one could love multiple people at once.

I had a distant cousin who lived a quiet life throughout and took the liberty of confiding things with me from time to time. Once lighting a smoke, he randomly told me he was in love with a man, and that day I learnt that love is also found in the same gender.

I shifted to a new city a few years later and barely met or spoke to anyone for the first six months. As big as the city was, my life, limited to the four corners, screamed boredom. During those times, I learnt, love is also found in loneliness. Love is also finding your comfort. Love is also scribbling random patterns on a blank page when words fail you. Love does not necessarily have to be noisy; loving could be in different dimensions.

But sometimes, love does not make sense. Sometimes, it just does not exist. And sometimes, we want to be away from love. Like many other things, you need rest from love. You want love to get replaced by something blank. Like looking at the sky into the wide openness of nothing. So that when you come back, you know what you should hold onto. Sometimes, you need a void to be filled.

As I sat there on that little bench, watching the sunlight play through the trees, a gust of wind swept through me.

I have, within me now, the love my younger self once wept for. It’s not the love I had imagined - it is quieter, slower, sometimes still lonely, but it’s mine.

Love, I’ve learned, isn’t a destination we reach. It’s a patient, unfolding presence. It’s waiting. It’s forgiving. It’s showing up for yourself, again and again, even when no one else does.

And maybe, just maybe, that's the kind of love that lasts. It’s the kind of love my future self deserves.

Books - I am still reading Stoner. I spent some time rereading a few chapters again and again because something in Stoner’s life feels like it’s mine. Does it happen to you, too?

Movie - I saw a Telugu movie named “Court vs Nobody” on Netflix. What a brilliant cast and a strong storytelling! Left me with questions about my knowledge, and wonder about the society.

I have been spending a lot of time hunting down documentaries on YouTube. If you are interested in knowing the History of Yoga, you should watch this.

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Living in the illusion.

To say that I loved my profession as an Investment Banker would be a total lie, but I liked some bit of it. I liked catching early morning flights, I liked the times when it got a little adventurous with targets, I liked the money it paid that funded my travels, the stationeries that I bought and all the hobbies that I picked and turned into a passion.

But, one fine day, I quit just like that. This decision also shocked me. However, in my defence, I was tired of working, I was tired of improving, I was tired of reaching somewhere, I was tired of being told what to do and I got tired of all the deadlines that came my way every day, hour, minute and second. For it never ended. It never stopped finishing only it was finishing me.

Storm of Doubts

I was going through a spur of emotions after this drastic decision. Usually, I would have a list of things to do but I was clueless, and completely off track with the absurdity of this sudden change.

Everyone tells you to quit and follow your dreams. But does anyone tell you what happens when you quit just like that? Are you prepared for the aftermath?

I was so emotionally burdened that I started having brain fog. I started attaching my output to my constant behaviour of not doing anything productive. I thought I was failing because I was not having any visible results. The age-old output-driven behaviour was surfacing restricting my growth.

But here’s what no one tells us - that every moment spent trying to achieve our dreams is a silent growth that we usually don’t account for. Every day, in our constant effort to become better or work towards our goals, we adapt to the patterns that works best for us.

In this capitalist world, we always correlate a higher number to progress but sometimes even changing a direction and finding your way of living a life is also a growth.

Face to Face with the reality.

I was reminded of a quote by Carl Jung:

“The world is full of people suffering from the effects of their own unlived life. They become bitter, critical or rigid not because the world is cruel to them but because they have betrayed their own inner possibilities.”

That's when it hit me that up to now, I have lived a life that was not mine. That has shaped me with its assumptions and biases. And if I need to change the course of my life, I need to change the way I am structured.

Frankly, it took a lot of time and it’s still taking the time it needs.

I became an explorer of my own life. For the first few days, I decided to be patient. I took a passive seat and watched life unfold on its own. It felt liberating and wise not to take any decision. Maybe sometimes, we don’t know what we seek, and we let the event take its course of action. This started working in my favour. I felt at ease by just doing nothing.

Discovering what works best for me.

When the first step succeeded, I decided to do a few more things:

1. I decided to let loose - not to be worried about every small and random thing. Instead, I started investing my energy in important matters like what to read, skills that I needed to learn, how I be less dependent on money etc

2. Changing the perspective - Instead of saying I quit my high-paying corporate life, I kept telling myself that I was resetting my life. It's not a stop button. It's a pause button.

3. After a brief break - I started working on my dreams. Most of the time, it was overwhelming, so I took the approach of finishing only one task on a given day.

4. Connecting with the right people - This decision was the game changer. I spent my time and energy gaining knowledge and making a network of people from whom I learned a lot.

5. Working on my skills/flaws - This is where I started getting the hang of things. I kept a journal where I mentioned the many mistakes I made, and the things I would like to learn and kept seeking during my previous busy life.

I still don’t have answers to many things and I might not be seeking them immediately because there’s a weird fun in peeling your life layer by layer. In stillness. In making mistakes and then learning. In slowing down. Not chasing but embracing life.

Sometimes, real growth isn't climbing higher—it’s stepping sideways, pausing, and planting roots in the ground that finally feels like your own.

From this newsletter onwards, I am introducing a series of recommendations that helped me get through the week. Hope you like it. :)

I saw two brilliant short movies this week.

To Scale: Time

Panchwa Paratha

I am currently reading one of the best novels ever written - Stoner by John Williams. I shall post a note about it very soon.

That’s all for today. See you next week. :)

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going global, eh?

i was on a cruise in vietnam. i and a bunch of other travellers got together to explore a few hidden islands around cat ba. as the ship was about to approach the shore, my fellow friends jumped off the boat deep into the raging sea and i couldn’t. with my incompetence and embarrassment, i silently stood next to the captain and watched them splashing them on the surface. the captain, being aware that i am an indian, told me we indians don’t know how to swim and that most indians don’t have civic sense, we bargain a lot and that we don’t pollute the environment the most. it felt like a personal attack but i had an idea of his aversion towards indians. and i agree with most of the things he said.

what do indian men really possess?

they barely conceal their excitement of being in a different place multiplied with the lack of social skills. most of it we see in our homes and we chose to ignore it. this could be tolerated in our homeground but as we step outside the borders, can barely one tolerate it. the idea or thought of being in a foreign land without having to bother about country, character and care represents indian tourists and men largely.

ff you remember, in one of my essays before, i mentioned that i had a hard time getting from bangalore to delhi on the train. the journey was a reminder that we are so filthy as a country that it might seem beyond repair. because travelling in a shared space bothers me, i usually pocket extra for comfort. i was in 2ac of rajdhani, expecting it to be an average ride.

but to my dismay (but not surprising), i sensed constant staring, men scratching their groin, watching reels on speaker, talking loudly on the phone, interrupting the private spaces, making unnecessary conversation, farting, snoring, making the whole compartment a dumping ground. some of them just roamed in towels.

what would take indian men to learn basic manners to be in the public? sometimes, these men are also accompanied by women and they see it all happening and consider it normal.

some of these are the reasons why i am still a stranger to my own people in my own country. simply because they don’t understand the space.

how to be a stranger?

make yourself immune to what is happening around, behaviour wise. it’s okay to explore different versions of yourself except without hampering other’s peace.

minding your business would be a great option. you are not supposed to pick unnecessary conversation with fellow passengers nor are you supposed to eavesdrop on their activity. a warm hello is fine. see if they are comfortable continuing the conversation. don’t force it. do not peep on other phones. do not stare at women, especially when they are alone. they don't need your help. don’t get overly excited seeing people of different colours. do not make others around you uncomfortable. make sure at least your bowels are fine before the trip. don’t deliberately push people in the crowd because you do that in your own country. there are rules to be in the queue like there are traffic rules.

make saying goodbye a habit.

respect different country’s various cultures that you are visiting. not every country has the same tradition. the women roam comfortably in few clothes because their country is liberal unlike yours so don’t behave rude. they don’t owe you a land of gold. likewise, if you feel that you don’t belong to a particular place, instead of sulking and ruining the vibe, learn to say goodbye as quickly as possible.

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to have me is not to have you.

to be bold is to stand in front of a broken mirror.

finding shapes in the pieces

is to find courage in the storm.

Hiking with other fellow women was breaking a lot of stereotypes from the time when most of us thought that any kind of sport was only meant for men. Although women have learnt to break the barriers, survive on eggshells and bring fame, money and the stage to themselves. That is no news to anybody.

When our lives intertwined, it all looked pretty natural. The conversation about divorces, babies, in-laws, careers and heartbreaks was sort of expectant. This realisation was not just one-sided. It felt that women were now ready to hear such stories from each other.

But sometimes, its too difficult to go beyond what is there on the surface.

to have me is not to have you.

change is where you have constantly stayed

from a baby to miss to missus to mother to nanna

the love transcended but not me.

You see, no matter what we achieve, there will always be a strange feeling that will linger around us. What if something goes wrong? Is this stupid? Will they like me? Am I too much? The scarier part of women’s life is the FEAR.

The fear of not being enough, not smiling enough, not caring enough, not cooking enough, not weaving enough. Its all the thing that choses us.

But here we are sharing a moment in this cosmos together. Smelling nature, smiling through the conversation, soaking in the hues and catching glimpses of each other doing all these things.

to have me is not to have you.

for a woman

weaving, manners, elegance are mountains

choices, laughter, reading are sea

most of us have none.

As we approached spring, we thought deeply about our next course of action. Should we go with full clothes on, or should we just wear undergarments? Fear—here it is. No one watched us, yet something invisible always surrounded us. There is no freedom for animals and women.

NOTHING - I declared. We go inside with no clothes.

to have me is not to have you.

o child of mine

within me

you sit like a baby

outside, you are a nanna.

Courage is contagious. You see passing it from one person to another in no time. As we jumped in the water, the child in us showed up. Nothing mattered. The moment felt its all we had got and that we lived like nothing else mattered.

to have me is not to have you

so I do the easiest thing

no husband, no child, no boundaries

to have you is to have me.

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Today, was day three with the dark sky. Last night, the entire town was drenched in a hailstorm that felt like the deadliest one ever. After the big wash, today it felt less greenish than before. A relief as I and some of my mates from the dorm decided to hike to Tattapani in Bir which was housed in a hot spring. Taking a dip in a hot spring in this cold weather made much more sense.

NEW EXPERIMENTS

The last time I hiked was 9months ago. And a lot had changed in my body in those 9 months. I assume only good things. I was practising yoga daily, had become a yoga teacher in the interim and above all my breath game had improved. So, I was up for a few experiments on this hike.

In the past, during my expedition, I was among those who trembled at every step of the trail. Frequent breaks, ragged breathing and constant loss of energy - the sport felt more like work than fun. But I was never to leave. Because hiking allowed me to be in the embrace of nature. The time and the place that only felt real to live by. But to do that it needed work.

As we started walking, my heart started beating fast for the first few steps which was natural because when your body starts moving, you need more energy and the heart starts to pump more blood to the entire body so the rate goes up. But it needed to be controlled, so, my respiratory system needed to be in control.

KEEPING MY MOUTH SHUT.

Now here’s what we lack. Most of the time, when we are short of breath, we tend to exhale through the mouth which is said to be one of the most dangerous things to do to our body. Breathing through the mouth loses more water from the body hence more energy loss. Constantly inhaling and exhaling through the mouth causes more damage to our system than we know - snoring, insomnia, and heart attacks are some of the serious life causes just because we use the mouth to exhale.

So, I shut my mouth literally and started walking on the path. Surprisingly, within 10 minutes, I was back to my usual pace and walking on an uphill terrain felt tolerating. But that just wasn't enough, my breath still felt heavy.

Upon reaching to an abandoned house, we decided to take a break. I sipped very little water and decided to slow my breath down.

“To breathe is to absorb ourselves in what surrounds us, to take in little bits of life, understand them, and pieces of ourselves back out. Respiration is, at its core, reciprocation.” wrote James Nestor in his book Breathe.

BREATHE SLOW, LIVE MORE.

As I reminisce this line from the book, I realise, that in life, like everything else, nature demands us to slow down including our breath. Slow living, slow travelling and slow breathing.

I realised another thing I was supposed to do to control my frequent breathing was to slow it down. Especially exhalation. The longer my exhalation, the less carbon dioxide I am losing which is helping me control my respiratory requirements. Now, there is something very interesting that everyone should be aware of about breathing.

To breathe more, you need to breathe less.

On average, we humans breathe 18 times a minute and we live for approx 80 years. Dogs breathe for 30 times a minute and live for around 12 years whereas the Tortoises breathe 5 times a minute and live for more than 140 years.

I think it's a great analogy to conclude that we all come here with a limited time to breathe, the faster we breathe, the sooner our life ends and vice versa.

I applied this logic to my breath and now I was breathing less, going far and better.

THE LOST ART OF BREATHING.

As we reached to the place, I kept thinking about this little experiment and its win, I couldn't stop worrying about many basics that we neglect in our lives. Or maybe simply we just don't know how or what to do. Something as basic as breathing can recover many life problems. Unfortunately, even when we get professional help, breathing techniques are not given priority anywhere. We focus on muscles, bones, toning and shaping. But it's the respiratory system that needs to be worked on.

India as a country is blessed with sages and scholars who have written about Pranayama (Breathing techniques) in many lengths only to be kept in a distant corner of the shelf today.

A NEW WAY OF LIFE.

This small experiment paved my way to a new world of experiments with my breath. Now, it's just not limited to trekking but it goes beyond that. In my daily life, I have been conscious about my breath which eventually helps while running, talking, watching a movie and staying still.

The hot spring felt like bliss. There's a certain magic that happens when you look at life more closely. When my breath felt difficult, I realised how important to spare and save it to live a beautiful moment like dipping into hot water in cold weather of 3 degrees.

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Pls, accept my sincere apologies for not showing up here in the last 2 weeks. Sometimes, when life throws you a lemon - you stand still, confused trying to figure out what to do with it. Because of course, you don’t know how to make lemonade. That is precisely what happened to me

But I am not late to the party, am I? If you care, I made lemonade out of lemons, btw.

Delhi.

In the second half of February, I took a break from Bangalore and travelled far up to the North for two main reasons. One was that I badly missed my friends in Delhi and the second was that I had to attend a writing workshop in Bir. This was the first time I made a trip this far to learn something.

Reaching Delhi was quite a struggle (it's a separate topic to be discussed again) but I made it in one piece and ghar ka khana in a Punjabi house for a week restored my energy and enthusiasm.

Bir.

The sun next morning felt soft and full of promises in the new place. As I stepped out of the bus, my feet were painfully cold on Bir’s soil.

It was 6 am. And the town was eerily quiet, windy and stable. The first sun fell on the trees crowning them with golden beads. I imagined the street filled with tourists, vehicles, and chaos three hours later. That's how every popular place is especially in Himachal.

Bir is about 500 km from Delhi and is pretty accessible to cities like Delhi and Gurgaon. You cannot not consider too many honkings and chatter on the road.

Adding to my “first list” is the place where I was staying. It was the renowned Deer Park Institute in Bir. They were the host of this workshop and offered quite an affordable dorm for the travellers. This could be the lamest or least important matter I would be impressed with about Deer Park.

The next four days went by making acquaintances with my community people, learning more about writing, trying local cuisines here and there and walking to the nearby villages.

In those four days, I ate Siddu - a Himachali dish of fermented steam bread of whole flour in a local set-up stall, tried Thukpa in one of the Tibetan restaurants, Nutree Kulcha next to the hot spring, had my first matcha coffee and ate one of the best south Indian food in a lavish cafe.

I particularly didn’t bother to whip my phone out to look for the places that I must visit. It was just happening minute by minute, day by day in every moment, I was traversing to places without having to make any effort.

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Zen.

Days passed by and a few realisations started to kick in about Bir. The very first is about Deer Park Institute. The institute has been a foundation for creating a strong community in Bir. Not just the writing workshop that I was attending, but it hosts many workshops that are free of cost and open to everyone. Just when I was there - they were conducting at least 4 workshops simultaneously. This allowed a lot of travellers to travel with a learning mindset and meet new people with diverse interests. It showed at the breakfast table where everyone talked about their experiences and likings.

The campus of the institute was as beautiful - with sustained choices and carefully curated every corner of the building. My favourite corner was the library. It felt like an old memory. Maybe because this was the first time I saw all my favourite genres at the same place - philosophy, culture, languages, fiction. It just felt like a place where I belonged. I did make a promise to myself that I would go back just to read the books and do practically nothing.

Slow.

Just the fifth or the sixth day - when I walked the same street that I did upon arriving, I noticed it still looked the same except the shops were open and gentle wafts came from the restaurants. There were no deliberate attempts to sell any offbeat place, no overcrowding of pizza shops or unwanted shouting of taxi prices. Bir stayed quiet throughout the day. The shops only sold the locally produced product without overprizing it. The locals valued their culture, place and relationships with the tourists. There were no drug sellers on the street. That's when I thought about the numerous places that need the same learning.

The place didn't feel like a burden.

On a hike to one of the nearest spots, I got a rare opportunity to be in sync with nature. I watched the birds, spoke to the trees, smiled at rhododendron flowers, heard the river flowing, walked with the clouds and showered in the hot spring. There was no grand adventure. Just living the small moments silently and mindfully.

“Caress the detail” wrote Vladimir Nabokov and nobody said any better.

On the day before I left Bir - it was the last day of the Tibetan calendar year and they celebrated it traditionally by chanting and dancing to remove the evil spirits of the past year. I hopped in a car with people I made friends in Bir and went to witness the festival. The monastery was filled with bright colours - monks in their traditional costumes dancing around a flagpole and the rest of us sitting around covering the entire centre of the monasteries. It felt like an otherworldly experience filled with sound and colours.

Reflection.

In the end, when we go home, we take these experiences and try to live them as many days as possible. Sometimes you come back with all your questions resolved but other times you come back with a lot of questions.

Bir has only given questions to me as I was leaving:

1. How do we make all other tourist places as sustainable as Bir is?

2. When do I come back here again?

3. What do I do back home to feel like living a mountain life?

4. When do I get to talk to the Birds again?

5. Will I ever be able to get time to read those many books?

When I stepped off the bus on the very first day, I sensed that this place was different, and all the days I spent there proved me right. As Nabokov wrote elsewhere, we don’t read with our eyes but with our minds.

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